Given a Chance
by aehawthorne
Summary: When Felicity confronted Ra's Al Ghul about his plans for Oliver, intending to attempt to appeal to his humanity, she didn't expect that conversation to end with Ra's granting her the chance to tell Oliver everything that was in her heart before she lost him forever. Nor was she expecting to come out of it with a plan to stop what's the wheels Ra's Al Ghul had set in motion


"I need to talk to you," Felicity announced, marching into the room where she'd witnessed Thea be made impossibly, miraculously whole, her heels ringing against the stone floor. She knew that Ra's Al Ghul responded to strength, respected it, and she prayed he couldn't tell all of her bravado was false. "What is happening here is perverse. What you are doing to Oliver, what you are making him do, I am _not going_ to let it happen." Silence. Oliver's friend, Maseo, Sarab, whatever he called himself, glanced over at his master.

"You can leave us," Ra's Al Ghul said, his voice calm, steady, as if Felicity had not just threatened every single one of his carefully laid plans. When he turned to regard her, it took everything in her not to quail under his deep, immeasurable gaze. When they were alone, he said, "You have a great fire within you. I can see now why Oliver loves you."

"If you knew the first thing about love you would not be ripping Oliver away from his family," Felicity growled. Ra's seemed unfazed by her anger.

"I am merely helping him fulfill his destiny," he said evenly. Felicity wished he would get angry, or even annoyed, or express any sort of emotion at all. At least then she might have known whether her words were having any impact on him. This implacable calm did nothing but fill her with despair.

"Yeah, I know all about the 'survive my sword' prophecy," she said, because throwing it back at Ra's Al Ghul was easier than confronting the way it threatened to rip her world apart, "and I'm here to tell you that I could really give a crap. Me, and John, and _God help me_ Malcolm are not going to let this happen, and we have friends, and we have resources, and we will go to war to get Oliver back." They were empty threats- she and John didn't stand a chance against the League on their own, and it was doubtful whether Malcolm would help them, since the only person in the world that he cared about besides himself at that moment was not Oliver- but empty threats were the only threats she had.

"Many lifetimes ago, I loved a woman immeasurably," Ra's said, as if Felicity had not spoken. She wondered where he was going with this. "And she loved me." As he spoke, he turned away from her and walked over to the Lazarus pit. Gazing out over its waters, still now but roiling only hours before, he continued, "We had a son, and then a daughter, and for many years I felt I was the most fortunate man in the world. Then one night a man came to my door and he gave me a horrible choice- to leave without saying a word to them, or to stand and watch them tortured and then killed. And I left without a farewell, and to spare them pain I endured an agony worse than death."

"Sounds like you gave up too easily," Felicity said flatly. She didn't have it in her to be angry anymore. All she felt was exhaustion and desperation.

"There is one immutable truth about life," Ra's replied. "It is often more cruel than it is fair. It rarely provides the opportunity for any of us to find closure." He turned away from the Lazarus pit and walked toward Felicity once more with slow, measured steps. Ra's Al Ghul, she was coming to learn, was not a man who hurried. He leveled his gaze with hers, studied her in a way that made her feel uncomfortably exposed, like she was being placed under a microscope, and said, in a sorrowful voice, "And all your posturing, and all your threats of war, they merely delay the inevitable, causing you to forfeit the opportunity you have, which was denied me. You need to tell Oliver goodbye. Tell him how much you love him. Tell him whatever it is your heart needs to express. And do it _now_ , before he is lost to you forever." He ducked his head, lowering his eyes from Felicity's, and swept past her, his long black robes brushing the floor, leaving her standing frozen in the middle of the room. She wasn't sure how she'd been expecting that conversation to go, whether she'd been expecting it to end with her successfully appealing to Ra's' humanity and him agreeing to release Oliver or with Ra's striking her down for daring to challenge him, but she knew that she hadn't been expecting _this_. But as she stood there, paralyzed by shock and indecision, Felicity realized that Ra's Al Ghul was right. There were things she had never told Oliver, things he needed to know. She'd kept them to herself when he'd left to fight Ra's on a mountaintop, and when she'd thought that he was dead she'd had to live with that regret, the regret of him never knowing how she felt, of not having said anything when he'd told her that he loved her, of not having closure. She wouldn't live with that regret again. She wouldn't allow herself to. Not if this would be the last chance she'd ever have to tell Oliver what was in her heart. Not if, this time, the losing him was real.

She was about to go and find Oliver when that thought flashed through her like a bolt of lightning. _Losing him_. She was going to lose him. Once she left Nanda Parbat, she would never see him again. After that point, it would be like he was dead. A second thought followed on the heels of the first- _She couldn't lose him._

Ra's Al Ghul's plans for Oliver were in motion now, and Felicity didn't know how to stop them. But she knew she had to try. She would never forgive herself if she didn't. On a whim, she reached into her jacket pocket and was surprised when her fingers brushed something that felt like glass. She closed her hand around the object and pulled it out to look at it. It was a small glass vial full of some kind of white powder. She didn't know what the powder was, but she was fairly certain she could guess at its use. She realized that Maseo must have slipped it to her on his way out of the room. In an instant, she knew what she had to do.


End file.
